The blue medical brace lay on the floor like a dead insect, its internal cooling fans giving one last, pathetic whir before falling silent. Without its numbing vibration, the pain in Nyx's shoulder returned in a jaw jarring wave hot, and relentless. She gritted her teeth, her vision blurring for a second as she leaned against the cold glass wall.
Sweat beaded on her forehead, stinging her eyes. She needed to move, but she was a mess. She grabbed a discarded sterile sheet from the supply cart, and using her teeth and her one functioning hand, she tore it into a long, strip. She wrapped the fabric tight around her torso, pinning her right arm against her chest to stabilize the joint. Each tug of the fabric made her stomach roll, but when she was done, she felt a grim sense of readiness.
She wasn't wearing her leather jacket or her combat boots. She was in a thin, grey patient tunic that felt like paper against her skin, her feet bare and vulnerable against the seamless, white floor.
"Anomaly, am I?" she muttered to the empty room, her voice a low, dangerous rasp.
Her "Null" nature was a double edged sword, a curse wrapped in a mystery. It kept the S rank monsters like Malachai at bay, but it also meant the Spire's miracle cures technologies built on the very energy she negated couldn't touch her. She was healing the old fashioned way: with blood, grit, and an agonizingly slow passage of time.
She approached the glass door. There was no handle, no keypad, no visible latch. It was a smooth, polarized surface that looked unbreakable. In the Pit, Nyx had learned a fundamental truth: everything had a breaking point. You just had to find the frequency that made it shatter.
She placed her left palm against the glass. As her skin made contact, the faint, high-pitched hum of the room's security field began to flicker and groan. The "Void" in her didn't just stop the energy, it hungrily consumed it. The overhead lights in the hallway outside dimmed, their power diverted into the hungry vacuum of her touch. With a soft, pressurized hiss, the magnetic seal on the door gave way, sensing a total system failure.
She slipped out into the corridor, moving with the silent, predatory grace of the Shadow.
The Observation Wing.
"Captain, we have a containment breach in Med Bay 4," the AI's voice echoed through Malachai's earpiece, cold and detached.
Malachai, still standing at the one way observation window three floors up, didn't look surprised. He watched the heat signature on his wall monitor. Most patients would be stumbling, drugged, or calling for help. Nyx was moving in the shadows of the vents, her silhouette hugging the walls where the camera angles were weakest.
"Do not engage," Malachai commanded, his voice a low vibration that made the junior technicians in the room shiver.
"Lock down the elevators, but leave the stairwell to the Research Wing open. Give her a path."
"You're letting her run?" Geoffrey asked, stepping up beside him, his brow furrowed. "Mal, the Council's oversight team is already at the gates. If they see her wandering the halls like a ghost, they'll have all the 'biological hazard' evidence they need to justify a permanent lobotomy."
"She's not wandering," Malachai said, his silver eyes tracking the red dot on the screen with a look that bordered on admiration. "She's hunting. She wants her brother. Let's see how far the Shadow can go before her body reminds her she's human."
The Research Wing
Nyx found him three floors down, deep in the heart of the Spire's restricted "Alpha" sector.
The room was a nightmare of clinical efficiency. It wasn't a bedroom, it was a laboratory. Darren was strapped into a high back chair, his head covered in a mesh of silver wires that looked like a crown of thorns. Monitors surrounded him, displaying violent, jagged waves of purple light the visual representation of his telepathic frequency.
He looked so small. Too small for the power he held. His blue eyes were open but rolled back, his chest heaving as if he were running a marathon while sitting perfectly still. Every few seconds, a spark of psychic static would jump from the wires, making his small frame twitch.
"Darren!" Nyx lunged toward the door, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.
This door didn't budge. It was reinforced with lead and gold thread a telepathic shield designed to keep Level 4 frequencies from leaking out.
"He can't hear you, Nyx. He's in a medically induced REM state."
Nyx spun around, her "good" fist clenched, her feet instinctively finding a fighter's stance despite the pain in her shoulder.
Malachai Crowe stood at the end of the long, white hall. He wasn't armed, but he didn't need to be. Even without his tactical gear, he looked like a weapon. The air around him felt thick and pressurized, the gravity warping just enough to make her feel the staggering weight of her own exhaustion.
"Let him go," she snarled, her grey eyes flashing with a cold fire.
"He's a kid. He's sick. You're killing him with those machines! This isn't healing, it's a dissection."
"We are stabilizing him," Malachai countered, taking a slow, measured step forward. As he entered the ten foot radius of her Null field, the heavy, suffocating pressure in the hallway snapped like a dry twig. He let out a long, slow breath. The blissful, addictive silence was back. He could feel his own pulse again.
"His outburst in the Grey Zone nearly fried his central nervous system. Without those machines to vent the excess psychic pressure, his own mind would have turned his brain to ash within an hour of your arrival."
Nyx looked back at Darren, then at Malachai. She hated that his voice was so steady, so devoid of the oily lies she heard in the Pit. In the slums, people lied to get your money or your life. Here, they lied with "logic" and "safety."
"He needs his suppressants," she said, her voice trembling with a mix of fury and fear. "The real ones. Not the diluted trash Dreg sold me on the black market."
"He's getting them. The purest pharmaceutical grade the Green Zone produces," Malachai said. He was only five feet away now. He could see the way her shoulder was slumped, the makeshift bandage already spotted with a fresh, blooming flower of blood.
"But he's also a Level 4 Telepath who breached a State guarded firewall. The Council doesn't see a sick boy, Nyx. They see a weapon of mass disruption that needs to be dismantled and studied."
"And what do you see?" Nyx asked, stepping directly into his space. She was shorter than him, but she stood her ground, her face inches from his.
Malachai looked down at her. He felt the absolute, terrifying stillness she projected the way she deleted the chaos of his world just by existing. He found himself wanting to reach out, to see if her skin felt as cold as the void she carried. It wasn't love. It was a hunger a desperate, selfish need for the peace only she could provide.
"I see a problem I'm not ready to solve yet," he whispered.
Suddenly, the red emergency lights in the hallway began to strobe. A siren, melodic but urgent, began to wail through the Spire.
"Captain," Geoffrey's voice came through the overhead speakers, sounding uncharacteristically strained.
"The Council's 'Recovery Team' has breached the front gate. They have an Executive Warrant signed by the High Auditor. They aren't here for a conversation, Mal. They're here to take the girl and the boy to the Black Site for 'containment.'"
Nyx's blood went cold. "The Black Site? No. I'm not going back in a cage. I'll kill you before I let you take us there."
Malachai looked at the door holding Darren, then at the elevator banks where the Council's men would soon appear. He looked at Nyx's busted shoulder and her bare, blood stained feet. If he gave her up now, the silence would go with her. He would be back in his world of crushing gravity and endless noise.
"Geoffrey," Malachai said into his comms, his voice hardening into a command. "Seal the Research Wing. If anyone tries to enter without my specific biometric override, treat them as a hostile invader. We're moving the assets to the Training Sub-level."
"Mal..." Geoffrey's voice was hesitant, fearful. "That's treason. You're defying a direct Auditor mandate."
"No," Malachai said, reaching out and grabbing Nyx's good arm his grip was firm, but for the first time, it was surprisingly gentle. "It's a training exercise. And if the Shadow wants to save her brother, she's going to have to learn how to fight like a Special."
Nyx looked at his hand on her arm, then up at his silver eyes. She didn't trust him not even an inch but as the sound of the Council's boots echoed in the distance, she knew the only way out was through the man who called himself her captor.